Alexis Paine... smiled? The collared, kneeling girl smiled back, but it must be a mask, like the one Alexis always wore. A rotten emotion bloomed. She threw the stick. "Fetch."
"Okay!" Kia jumped up and ran after the stick. Alexis liked to throw, and she liked to fetch! It was fun to play together!
I need to know what the fucked up trauma girl pilot says to this, the eisenhower girlie seems to be carrying the conversation and I love imagining the trauma girl pilot just quietly listening, occasionally nodding or shaking her head, maybe saying one or two words then maybe the eisenhower girl says
something like "wanna ditch this place?" and the trauma girl pilot just lights up and smiles and nods, or maybe says "yes please"... (I have other thoughts that are significantly less wholesome and nice but I didn't wanna bring everyone down with more Handler posting)
she follows the eisenhower girlie back to her quarters, her muscles tense and breathing shallow. her Handler didn't authorise this. her Handler didn't prepare her for this. no mission parameters, no rules of engagement, no voice in her ear from her God telling her what to do next.
"make yourself comfortable," the girl says, gesturing to the bunk.
she doesn't move. comfortable isn't a concept she understands anymore. she waits for the other shoe to drop, for the kindness to turn into familiar pain. that's the dance she knows.. brief warmth followed by necessary correction.
when the eisenhower girlie reaches toward her face, she doesn't flinch. doesn't close her eyes. just waits, ready to accept whatever comes next because that's what good hounds do.
but the touch is gentle, just fingertips brushing hair from her eyes.
"you okay?" the girl asks with concern
Canopian Militia Buster (MOD) pilot chats up an ex-WoB Manei Domini Celestial pilot post-Jihad, unaware that her neural interface implants only leave her another 3 years to live.
(3082, decolorized)
Where exactly did this interpretation of mecha as "fucked up dom-sub sex thing with a transgender doll girl kink thrown in" come from?
It cannot have been the result of Armored Core 6 gaining mainstream success alone and I do not see any other mecha series that fits that descriptor even slightly.
It has been a thing for actual decades, there was a brief twitter and Tumblr centric writing community about it before ACVI or WFM ever released, it's just an easy leap of "traumatized mechpilot realises they've been made a weapon not a person" & "traumatised trans girl living for the others ideas"
Elements of it have been in the genre since the beginning, with just how fucked up things were for Shinji, Rei, and Asuka in Evangelion. It's been amplified by all the fiction about neural links with your mech making it hard to tell where you stop and the machine begins.
From there, trans girls identified pretty hard with the whole "this isn't my real body, my real one is the mech" thing, and it's not a big leap from "traumatized teenager trying to impress their parental figure" to "traumatized trans girl trying to impress their Handler."
And then you get glorious mechsploitation trauma transbians in things like Nexus Alpha and it kinda seals the deal as being A Thing™ the community is into and actively supports the creation of.
i feel like thats giving NGE too much credit, mecha before and after that was mostly real and super robot and not Annos Flesh Monstrosity Depression Funsies or some variant thereof. Unless theres some examples that flew under my radar
True, but Gundam and Macross and Battletech all have their share of trauma bean pilots, too. Evangelion is just the most glaring example. Also, I know *so many* autistic trans girls who basically identify as Rei.
It is literally just armored core that's it. Gundam has cyber newtypes and has had them since Zeta, but that is clearly not what the trend is drawing from. It's absolutely just armored core, mostly six
It derives pretty much entirely from the whole preexisting Empty Spaces dollkink/traumacore sphere grabbing onto Armored Core 6. Almost all of it was preexisting themes in that space (see also: "combat doll") being projected onto mech stuff, rather than anything preexisting in mecha media really.
IMO the (re)popularization of the cyberpunk genre is the biggest influence, with AC6 and Evangelion being a far second. Given the huge amount of ground cyberpunk already covers, the kink stuff is merely incidental.
LANCER also grew in popularity around that time, alongside the new Gundam: Lesbians edition.
Mechas have been about trauma and I guess, it all sort of coalesced with Evangelion in people's mind.
I was gonna say how ridiculous the idea of a mech with a cassete player is and how weird the tech timeline would have to be for that to happen 'till I remember that The Phantom Pain exists and I didn't bat an eye at that one no sir.
Mentally, I imagine this, and then meeting a third who's simply like "Wait, you ladies actually have to PILOT the mech. Mine just kinda does stuff on her own. Surprisingly good conversationalist, too"
(Specifically thinking like... Wanzer/VT pilot, Late-Model Gundam/AC pilot, Tachikoma/BT pilot)
Comments
"Okay!" Kia jumped up and ran after the stick. Alexis liked to throw, and she liked to fetch! It was fun to play together!
The sheer potential of this plot...
she doesn't move. comfortable isn't a concept she understands anymore. she waits for the other shoe to drop, for the kindness to turn into familiar pain. that's the dance she knows.. brief warmth followed by necessary correction.
but the touch is gentle, just fingertips brushing hair from her eyes.
"you okay?" the girl asks with concern
(3082, decolorized)
It cannot have been the result of Armored Core 6 gaining mainstream success alone and I do not see any other mecha series that fits that descriptor even slightly.
(She’s quite happy right now, don’t worry!)
People went "what if 621 and handler walter but they were both girls"
Mechas have been about trauma and I guess, it all sort of coalesced with Evangelion in people's mind.
Totally normal mech shit happening here. No biggie.
(Specifically thinking like... Wanzer/VT pilot, Late-Model Gundam/AC pilot, Tachikoma/BT pilot)
I absolutely love the more clunky big mechanical mechs.
Esp mechs crewed by multiple people